Kansas lawmakers are reviewing Senate Bill 352, introduced by Senator Craig Bowser, to create a Bitcoin and digital assets reserve fund inside the state treasury. The reserve would be managed by the state treasurer and sourced from unclaimed digital assets, including airdrops, staking rewards, and interest, rather than direct Bitcoin purchases or taxpayer funds.

Crypto payments firm Mercuryo has teamed up with Visa to offer near real-time crypto-to-fiat off‑ramps via Visa Direct, allowing eligible users to route proceeds to Visa debit and credit cards within minutes. The integration aims to lower costs and speed up cross‑border payouts, with fiat funds spendable at more than 150 million Visa‑accepting merchant locations.

Merkle Manufactory, developer of the Farcaster social protocol, said late Thursday it will return $180 million in venture funding to investors. Co-founder Dan Romero stated the network remains active, citing 250,000 December MAU and over 100,000 funded wallets, while Neynar assumes control of smart contracts, code repositories, the mobile app, and the Clanker token launchpad.

Capital One announced it will acquire fintech company Brex in a transaction valued at $5.15 billion, structured as a mix of cash and stock and expected to close in mid-2026 pending regulatory approval. The bank plans to integrate Brex's payments technology and stablecoin infrastructure to expand its business payments offering, while Brex CEO Pedro Franceschi is set to remain in charge after the acquisition.

F/m Investments filed with the U.S. SEC on Wednesday seeking exemptive relief to record ownership of the F/m US Treasury 3 Month Bill ETF (TBIL) on a permissioned blockchain. The $18 billion manager said the $6 billion fund would remain a 1940 Act ETF, with tokenized shares matching the same CUSIP, rights, fees, and voting privileges as existing shares.

Bitwise said in a report shared Wednesday that Q4 2025 revealed weaker prices alongside strengthening on‑chain activity and revenues, a setup it associates with bear‑market lows. CIO Matt Hougan drew parallels to early 2023 and flagged record usage on Ethereum and layer‑2s, a stablecoin market cap above $300 billion, and DeFi volumes surpassing centralized peers, while outlooks for 2026 remain divided.

Cryptocurrency-focused attackers are compromising existing publisher accounts on Canonical's Snap Store to turn previously legitimate Linux packages into crypto-stealing malware. By taking control of expired developer domains and email addresses, they push malicious updates that harvest wallet recovery phrases, exposing users to fund theft before Canonical removes the snaps. Security researcher Alan Pope warns that these incidents highlight weaknesses in Snap's trust model and urges stronger account verification, domain monitoring, and wider use of two-factor authentication.

Ripple's US dollar-backed stablecoin RLUSD is set to begin spot trading on Binance, initially supported on Ethereum with XRP/RLUSD and RLUSD/USDT pairs. The stablecoin, backed one-to-one by cash, short-term US Treasuries and equivalents, has surpassed a $1.3 billion market cap and is also cleared for institutional use in Abu Dhabi as an Accepted Fiat-Referenced Token.

Financial Secretary Paul Chan said Hong Kong plans to issue its first licences for fiat-referenced stablecoin issuers in Q1, describing the regulatory stance as "responsible and sustainable." The regime, passed in 2025, imposes strict reserve and redemption standards, while 11 trading platforms are already licensed under SFC oversight.